762 
There will then be nothing left but the head 
and “insides.” Leaving your fish on its right 
side, partially sever the head from the body. 
Your last, motion will be to take hold of the 
skinned portion with the right hand, still keeping 
that unrelenting grip on the head with the left 
thumb and first two fingers of that hand. Now, 
with a quick outward motion of both wrists 
break the head from the body and at the same 
time pull down on the head and drag all the 
intestines out, the body being held stiffly upright 
in the right hand. The viscera will come out 
attached to the head so removed, if the work 
has been done right. 
The fish is now actually ready for the pan, 
and the whole operation described above does not 
consume more than a minute of time. Of course, 
a diagram illustrating the process would con¬ 
vey the idea more readily to a novice, but any 
one reading the foregoing carefully can easily 
become dexterous in this fascinating method of 
dressing fish, which has the old ways of scaling, 
or removing scales by dipping into boiling water, 
“skinned to death,” to use a popular phrase. 
Every portion of the perch so prepared—and 
you can also dress bass in the same way, if you 
like—is edible, excepting the backbone, which 
may be readily slipped out with the fork after 
proper frying. You will then have on your plate 
a most toothsome morsel in the shape of two sec¬ 
tions of beautiful white meat without a bone to 
annoy. 
Following the Indian and somewhat lazy 
method of dressing perch, it may interest the 
readers of this journal to learn how the Abor¬ 
igines made what they called by a long, tough 
name; we by the word “chowder.” 
On the shore of some lake between two stones 
the big iron kettle is placed and a slow fire 
made under it. Slices of salt pork are first fried 
slightly on the hot kettle bottom, then a layer 
of thinly sliced raw potatoes is put in about 
three inches deep. Next comes a thin layer of 
finely sliced white onions, covered with about 
two inches of skinned perch. About this time 
you sprinkle in a small handful of salt and 
turn in about three quarts of pure water. After 
that keep putting in your layers of potatoes, on¬ 
ions and fish, with the addition of a little more 
pork, chicken or venison, if you have these articles 
handy, until the cauldron is nearly filled. Put on a 
tight iron lid, keep up the fire and cook slowly, 
without any stirring whatever being permitted, 
until the potatoes are cooked, but yet do not fall 
to pieces. Only those who have tasted the con¬ 
tents of a pot of that mixture are competent 
witnesses as to its extreme delicacy and sweet¬ 
ness. 
One “lake fish” has never been transplanted 
into any Adirondack waters, to my knowledge, 
although I have often sought him there. I 
mean the true pickerel or grass pike, a little 
fellow that rarely weighs more than from three 
to four pounds, when the Great Northern pike 
runs to twenty-five pounds or higher. This 
pickerel is abundant in Lake Champlain and else¬ 
where in New York lakes. He fancies warm, 
shallow waters at the mouths of creeks and 
among pond-lilies and bulrushes. If it was ever 
so introduced, it found the waters too cold or 
met its fate in the ever-ready jaws of the pike 
that went up with it in the same “sap-barrel” in 
the good old days. 
The pike perch is found in only one or two 
FOREST AND STREAM 
small ponds in the southeastern Adirondacks. He 
was introduced, with bull heads, perch and pike, 
more than forty years ago, and is still taken 
there along with them in goodly numbers. 
Two or three years ago some anglers in Lake 
George hooked a beautiful, bronzed-back fish 
weighing about five pounds, but none had ever 
seen “the like of him” before. Finally, an old 
sportsman in Ticonderoga, a storekeeper, was 
consulted. He promptly designated it a “Cham¬ 
plain pike,” and said that about eight years be¬ 
fore he and some friends had taken five or six 
of these fish from Champlain and had “lugged” 
them in a tin pail over the old carrying-place to 
Lake George and put them in there. 
This is the only result of these two “plants” 
that has developed, but it shows how well pike 
perch do 'n cold, inland lakes. Anglers should, 
therefore, urge the Commission to take steps to 
increase its numbers in such waters, especially 
in the Adirondack section. 
Among scores of trips after yellow perch, I 
well remember one taken a few years ago with 
an old chum, “Hank” Bulkley, in Jocko’s Creek, 
running into Champlain at West Addison, Ver¬ 
mont. We rowed over from Port Henry in the 
new skiff and anchored above the shore road 
bridge, in the channel between two broad fringes 
of water lilies, then in full bloom. The red¬ 
wing blackbirds were singing in the marsh, and 
bobolinks and robins made music on the higher 
grounds. 
Sport In 
A book which will prove invaluable to hunt¬ 
ers and fishermen who make the North their 
stamping ground is “The Fish and Game Clubs 
of the Province of Quebec,” just issued under 
the authority of the Minister of Colonization, 
Mines and Fisheries. The book gives many illus¬ 
trations showing the territory and quarters of 
the various clubs in the Province, each of these 
organizations having an article devoted to it. 
The Province of Quebec is the only one 
of the Dominion which offers to sportsmen the 
practically exclusive privileges of fishing and 
hunting over large tracts of forest, lake or river 
territory, the book announces, by way of intro¬ 
duction. These privileges, it continues, are leased 
to residents and non-residents alike, and non¬ 
residents who are lessees of such privileges, or 
who are members of a club leasing the same, 
are entitled to non-resident fishing and hunting 
licenses at the lowest rates. 
The unsettled territory of the Province of Que¬ 
bec is enormous, so that notwithstanding the fact 
that over five hundred leases have already been 
granted, thousands of miles of good territory 
are still available for private preserves. Many 
of the leases of fishing or hunting territory, or 
of both combined, are held by private individuals; 
but over two hundred fish and game clubs are 
incorporated in the Province. 
Some clubs, having a large membership and 
controlling fishing and hunting rights, exercise 
these rights over extensive tracts of country, 
while others are much smaller. The law limits 
to 200 square miles the extent of territory that 
may be held for hunting and shooting purposes 
by any one club, and three dollars per mile per 
My companion suggested that we discard all 
hand-lines and use only light trout rods and 
reels. He furnished me with his father’s lance- 
wood for the purpose. Well, perch of good size 
began to take the worm baits and we caught 
them at the rate of one or more a minute for 
more than an hour. Some of the larger ones 
put up quite a fight, and I became proficient 
in reel work, never having used one before to 
any extent. 
Finally business began to slacken up a bit. So 
we moved upstream about fifty yards and be¬ 
gan again. In less than an hour Hank said: 
“I can’t put my foot any place in this boat with¬ 
out stepping on a miserable fish. Let’s count 
’em and see how many we have got. What do 
you say?” A big job was surely ahead, but 
soon each had a double string reaching from 
neck to heel. We both wondered how we could 
ever have caught so many with two little poles. 
At Hank’s suggestion, we proudly displayed our 
catch in the village streets on the way home. The 
urbane grocer man most conservatively announced 
the weight of the two strings at thirty-three 
pounds. That was the only time that I came 
near being a game hog, and I have been ashamed 
of the “slaughter of the innocents” ever since. 
I am sure that old “Hank,” now a grizzly-haired 
contractor out Kansas City way, would agree with 
me, should he chance to see this article. 
Canada 
annum is the minimum price that can be charged 
for shooting privileges. 
The rental charged for shooting privileges de¬ 
pends upon their quality and accessibility. Less 
than fifty years ago, a season’s lease of the sal¬ 
mon fishing privileges in the Grand Cascapedia 
was offered for $100. To-day $12,000 a year is 
paid for the angling rights of a portion of the 
river. 
The prices paid for fishing privileges are in 
every case exceedingly reasonable. Leases for 
both shooting and fishing privileges are usually 
made for a term of five years, but are renewable 
for similar terms, though always at a compara¬ 
tively slight advance, because of the increasing 
demand. 
Many clubs and private individuals erect com¬ 
fortable camps upon their leased preserves, and 
some of them have erected really luxurious 
homes in the woods, overlooking a charming 
bit of lake or river scenery. In no part of the 
world, it is claimed, is there to be had better 
water or more healthy camping sites than among 
the Laurentian lake and mountain country of 
the Province of Quebec. 
The fishing rights in the inland waters of the 
Province, wherever the land remained the prop¬ 
erty of the Crown, became vested in the Province 
in 1882, by virtue of a judgment which decided 
that the right of fishing in inland waters belonged 
to the owners of the lands in front of, or through 
which such waters flow. Up to that time, prac¬ 
tically nothing had been done officially toward 
developing the great sporting attractions of this 
province, outside of the salmon fishing, for which 
(Continued on page 777.) 
